00:00Wrestlers are artists. It's about choreography and timing and acting.
00:08It's all these art forms in one. And when I used to watch it, not only was I
00:13captivated by the wrestling, but I was captivated by the characters.
00:18There is so much crossover in the realm of queer performance and wrestling.
00:23It's why gay-themed characters have always thrived throughout the history of
00:27professional wrestling. A lot of queer people don't know their career history
00:31and the struggles that queer performers have faced in wrestling have never been
00:36discussed. Whenever I first got to Moulins, of course, I kept everything under
00:40lock and key because I didn't want her to know that I was gay. In the early days
00:45of Pat Patterson's career, being homosexual was illegal and it was
00:48considered a mental illness. For them, it was always about being able to hide in
00:53plain sight. It sucks that it had to happen, but the people that kept fighting
00:57and fighting and fighting, like, they're the reasons why we're now what we are now.
01:00I don't want us to ever have to be somebody we're not again. Somebody has to
01:06start something, because if no one speaks up, nothing's ever gonna change.
01:15It's about time that you're not afraid to come out and be afraid that the promoter's
01:19gonna squash you down because of who you are and what you are. The ring is the
01:24only place I actually get to be who I am. The stereotype knew how I looked and
01:29then as soon as I start wrestling, it's like, holy crap, this guy is awesome.
01:34White man wrestling has had a great 2,000 years, but there's other kinds now.
01:40It is possible an out-from-the-jump gay person can get over it, can sell you
01:46merchandise, can bring in a house.
01:52Your talent should be the only thing that determines how far you get, but in
01:57order for us to get to this utopian idea, at some point it needed to be on record
02:01what actually fucking happened.
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